You can see it if you check https://fedidb.org/. Monthly active users have gone from just a hair under one million to somewhere around 1.4 million and still growing. How do we think this will go? How do we feel about this influx of new users? Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn’t?
I feel like I didn’t really recognize having different “platforms” like Mastodon, PixelFed, etc would give multiple opportunities for the fediverse to make a “first” impression with people.
Tbh I feel a little queasy about the change of tone but thats how it goes with influx of people. I‘ll keep my strict anti tech bro stance and will rapidly block any bigots as I always have. People can of course say and do what they please here and I‘m not gonna stop them. But i also am not forced to listen to it. Thats very incompatible to the outside world so clash is inevitable imho.
Lemmy once had a massive influx of new users, a lot left again and monthly active users has remained somewhat constant for a long time now. Let’s wait and see how many people actually stay on PixelFed.
I feel like I didn’t really recognize having different “platforms” like Mastodon, PixelFed, etc would give multiple opportunities for the fediverse to make a “first” impression with people.
Corporations have learned long ago the importance of properly identifying your audience, and the Fediverse is not exempt from that rule. Lemmy is the Fediverse version of Reddit and Mastodon is the Fediverse version of Twitter, and just like these two giants could live together with each other and also with Instagram without stepping on each other’s toes, so do their Fediverse versions can live with the Fediverse version of Instagram, PixelFed.
Now we’re just missing a Fediverse version of Facebook.
There is Friendica… yeah the name doesn’t roll of the tongue, and I only remember just for this comment… no shade to it
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Honestly, no arguement here. I can’t think of anything better so I’m unqualified regardless
Zuck would sue if they’d called it FediBook.
And Nextdoor
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First time i have posted on anything resembling insta in 111 weeks
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I’m excited. I’m one of those users, but I haven’t used it much because I can’t find followers. To be fair, I never used Instagram. I like the fediverse, I usually see the same articles get sent through other centralized communities other than reddit (tildes, hacker news, etc), but I enjoy the community discussion the best around here.
Yeah, I never used Instagram or Twitter so getting started on Pixelfed or Mastodon seems a bit daughnting for me. But I assume it you like platforms like that, you just search out a few people you enjoy and then add more from their content and others do the same and eventually it’ll all click into what people had in those corporate owned and controlled products.
I had kind of the opposite. Never used instagram but for some reason pixelfed just felt right and I started posting there when I joined the fediverse.
Awesome, glad to have you here future friend. If you know of people that may be of interest to add for mastodon/loops/Pixelfed please let me know and don’t be shy, I am always open but haven’t found time to search
Me too. I can’t find you on pixelfed?
I’ll have to figure out how to link you, I don’t have anything much there yet. Just a few pictures. My name was lifeinmultiplec there as it chopped the name. I assume I need to give you an instance to find me though .
Edit: maybe this will help: https://breeze.pictures/p/lifeinmultiplec/786636194842492930
P.s I’m liv@pixelfed.nz
Thanks, cool! I was able to start following you by searching for lifeinmultiplec@breeze.pictures in my instance. For some reason your pictures aren’t showing up for me yet but maybe it will populate soon.
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Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn’t?
Yes. The interface is good and familiar. The majority of the traffic is on one namespace where discoverability is good. Because of the nature of the medium, getting started with no algorithm is a lot easier to stomach than just looking at what your local people have to say.
This is not to bash Mastodon, but they need that algo, which is why Bluesky is hoovering up users. Also, their UI, depending on the server is more tweetdeckish, which might scare off a lot of casuals.
edit: I’ve been informed the bsky has no algo, so somehow they seem to be getting better results in discover, perhaps single name space or perhaps they have something behind the hood.
Also, to start with, all the journalists FLOODED info, Mastodon, without any algo; you just got a hundred wordsmiths screaming past each other and they all immediately followed each other, so you couldn’t just find people like Jeff Jarvis, you got to see everyone he had a professional experience of which is WAY more than anyone is prepared to read :)
Bluesky doesnt have an algorithm for its discover feed (the default), or at least it didn’t used to have one, but provides an API for building your own feeds which lets you do whatever you like.
Bluesky’s big growth was from the fact it was, like PF, easy to use and easy to navigate, and all the content was on one namespace.
Lemmy is an outlier imo. You can interact and repost and find content on different instances easily. Mastodon made following feeds from different instances nearly impossible which turned me off it permanently even if I believe in its value over Bluesky.
Bluesky doesnt have an algorithm for its discover feed
For not having one, my Discover feed was pretty dead on. Maybe just luck or maybe it was the right time for the right facebook influx.
edit: they might have one https://www.reddit.com/r/BlueskySocial/comments/1g9zzca/bluesky_dosent_have_an_algorithm_so_what_is_the/
Lemmy is an outlier
Lemmy is damn close to Reddit’s mental design, but instead of 27 different subs for news on one place, there are 2-3 different places that have a news sub. news@here and news@there isn’t hard to grasp, I think the platform works remarkably well.
The main Mastodon instance with their official app has discoverability. The difference is so much different from what I normally use - a 3rd party app and a 3rd party instance
Looks like pixelfed is just for pictures.
Seems like it’s the instagram to mastadon’s twitter.
It’s probably closer to IG than any other Fediverse app is to its non-Fediverse equivalent. Although introducing Collections and possibly Groups might make it more versatile and give it Flickr features (though not perhaps the comprehensive picture info and ability to download the original).
It federates very well with Masto, it’s just that the latter focuses on text and Pixelfed on pictures.
In fact, most of my Pixelfed feed comes from Mastodon.
I wonder how many of those users are the same person with multiple accounts on different platforms.
It’s strange to me how quickly I get +/- feedback on lemmy compared to actual comments and the replies that I get are almost always zero effort compared to what I get on reddit.
I get the feeling its normal for lemmy users to create multiple accounts and use them to sort of multiply their votes. What’s worse is mods can see who is voting and so should be able to do something about it… so are they as guilty?
I mean, there’s limited content, and Lemmy hasn’t attracted the same kind of personality as modern Reddit. It makes total sense that things would be upvoted quickly, but comments would be sparse or short.
People patted themselves on the back when they showed up for being “old reddit” and “power users”, but most of us were just cranky phone users who didn’t want to use the official app. Lemmy users are not the boistrous, verbose philosophers people wanted to believe they were.
We’re scrollers, sitting on the toilet.
This is a reasonable take but ngl I’m still a little sus.
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Gonna check this out. Looks interesting thanks.
I find it sort of shocking that you didn’t think people who use different types of social media would be swayed by non-micro blogging specific platforms. Nobody wants to join the fediverse because it’s the fediverse. They want to join something that’s fun and similar to what they’re used to.
Micro blogging sucks. I hate it. I’ve always hated Twitter and none of that hate has come from anything related to who has owned it or their policies. I’ve just genuinely never felt a desire to communicate with 280 characters (historically 140). The discussion threads are also garbage and all over the place. Why would someone who is used to platforms like Reddit or Instagram want to use Mastodon?
Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn’t?
Yes, it’s done “not be a micro blogging platform”.
I’m aware Mastodon doesn’t always have the same character limits that Twitter does, but that’s apart from the point.
I really enjoy Mastodon. Writers create threads to get around character limits. I actively search out others so I don’t need algorithms to chose for me. If you want spoon-fed it’s not for you though.
Is there a way to peruse pixelfed feeds from Lemmy or Mastodon? Or do I have to make yet another account?
Yes, you can follow a pixelfed account from your mastodon account and see their posts in your feed. Paste the url of their page into your mastodon search to bring up their profile, then you can view their posts and/or follow them.
Yeah, but that’s not browsing; that’s targeting a specific account you want to view more of.
Oh, to browse all the posts rather than just one account’s, go to https://pixelfed.social/web/explore which should show pretty much everything. (that’s the main server with the most users by far, and any other PF servers are federated with it so most of theirs should show up there as well)
That’s one thing that should be upgraded. There has to be a way to link your accounts in Lemmy, PixelFed, Mastodon, … so “follow” becomes “follow with” and choose the service.
There is something like that on most Mastodon pages where if you are viewing it just in your browser rather than from within your mastodon account, you can click Follow and it will ask for the server name you want to follow it from, so you have to enter your server name, then it will auto-open it in your Mastodon account for you.
I don’t know that there’s much more anyone could do than that, since any given server you are viewing has no idea what various fedi accounts you may have. That’s kind of what “decentralized” means–there’s no central database keeping track of all your accounts.
You can just open the Pixelfed links using your Mastodon instance:
Open URL in Mastodon
You can sign into Pixelfed with your mastodon account.
Wut. That doesn’t sound secure
Mastodon can view, I think, all fediverse posts if you are inclined to make that happen.
The mood and anger here is starting to feel like Reddit recently and now I know why
Well it doesn’t seem like there’s been another Reddit exodus, especially from looking at the user numbers for Lemmy. There hasn’t been a big screwup lately like with Meta or Twitter (but I think Bluesky is absorbing the Twitter refugees currently).
We feel good.
Great 👍
More users isn’t necessarily good.
Every time there’s an influx from whatever shit storm we retain about 20%.
? Why’s that not good?
There’s a lot of gatekeepers here who actively sabotage the project to keep it niche.
Some examples of active sabotage?
You can just scroll through the comments here, and see some examples.
2 separate unrelated statements.
Well on Lemmy the quality of content dropped. Low effort posts started becoming normalized. Lots of people entered who dont know what the Downvote button is for.
“when there were 0 users, the site was perfect”
Well, I’m glad you like it some much you want to preserve it. Best of luck.
Need better flagship app tbh. Pixelix is better imo but its 5bucks on playstore and sideloading on my current main phone is a hassle :/
Pixelix is on FDroid for free
There’s an official app now.
